The Lake of Sorrows Read Online Free PDF Page A

are already conspiring against you? Should I take some guardsmen and — “
    “No, Muhtar. Definitely not. I saw those cowards at the banquet. I would not trust them to organize the theft of a goat.”
    Muhtar almost sulked. He had felt like a very important man when his father told him to take a few of the youngest men of the army and discreetly follow the Patriarch’s carriage home. Now the youth felt simply like a boy saying good night to his father, and the bedchamber of Yannina’s new Pasha was large enough to make even a grown man feel small.
    “Cheer up, lad. There is no better place than Yannina to make my position unassailable. You will get to fight many conspiracies, aye, and armies, too. Look at the castle. Built years ago in a city split in half between glory and misery, but in a strategic place. A cross-roads between the Sultan’s empire and all commerce from the west. Just take a look. The palace above, and right at its feet - the lake.”
    Muhtar agreed without much interest. “No army can approach the palace from the rear.”
    “That is all the use you can see in the lake? You are stupid, poor Muhtar.” Alhi mocked his son mercilessly; it was the way Tepeleni men taught their sons. “You may be commander-to-be of my Army, but all these women you have gawked at today have turned your mind into soup.”
    “Enlighten me with your wisdom, father.”
    “The useless, the annoying ones, the spies from the courts of West and the East? What do you do with them? You pamper them, you set banquets like the one tonight to feed and please them - and then you throw them in the lake.”
    Alhi laughed at his own idea of statecraft. “Even a disrespectful emissary from a friendly court might join the spies. Who will be able to prove the slightest thing afterwards? The lake is large, and has the deep waters to hold its secrets.”
    “The weather is strange here.” Muhtar changed the subject inelegantly, feeling too grown a man to be lectured like this. “It changes without any warning from sunshine to shade and deep shadows.”
    “Just like me.” Alhi chuckled contentedly. “This castle was occupied by tyrants in the past and that is the legacy we shall continue, Muhtar.”
    Muhtar dared to disagree. “Yannina is famous for its wine and splendid women, too.”
    His father roared with merriment. “Always the women with you, eh? I fear you will be quite busy with those here.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “But be careful and never forget your father’s advice. Never yield an inch of ground to your official wife, Pashou. She is too fond of exercising her extreme jealousy.”
    “My wife? But father, I am not married.”
    “Betrothed. The lady Pashou is no longer a child, and I need the alliance with her father more than ever now. You will marry next time we need to put on a spectacle to impress this city. Mind you, I need her father’s support and alliance, but not his domination. You should enjoy the good life, being my son, but do not let her beauty - and the pleasures she is undoubtedly able to give you - become your shackles. Make sure you ride enough women before your marriage to learn how to keep your wits about you.”
    Cherry-red in the face despite himself, Muhtar muttered something unintelligible.
    “You have already started, I see. Very good. She will try to throw you in silken shackles, but throw those shackles off again. Knowing her father, he will probably let his harem girls train his little Pashou to become more intoxicating than hashish or opium. Do not be ensnared, my son. I love you, but I would not allow even you to become a danger to our family. I would not allow
anyone
to become a danger to our family.”
    Muhtar stood stiffly at attention, like a Janissary before his commander. “I hear your warning, father and the devotion that prompted it. But remember your own saying: ‘Fate is deaf.’”
    “Ooh, the cub is lecturing the lion, is he? That is indeed what Tepeleni